Start after you finish

Start building your life only after you finish the design of what you want it to be. Sure, you can spend all day doing tasks and being busy. But is the work actually productive? Are you actually closer to where you want to be at the end of the day?

Or are you just tired having used up your energy in fruitless pursuit of nothing in particular?

The only possible way to answer this question is to clearly identify where you are actually trying to end up and what you are trying to accomplish in the long-term.

So step one in any great journey is defining the desired outcome in the clearest and most descriptive terms possible. Once this is complete, then you can get started figuring out what tasks are required along the way and what some of the interim milestones might look like.

This way, when faced with choices about how to spend your time each day – you will clearly know what actions to take based on whether or not they are part of the path to where you want to go or just one of many inevitable distractions along the way.